David Gillon

Just had my first coronavirus swab test as part of the Office of National Statistics Covid-19 survey. Got a call this morning to ask if I was available between 12 and 2, and the survey-person turned up at my door about 1PM. She was gloved, but not masked, had some form of NHS ID I didn't get close enough to read and just stood about six feet from my door while she handed over a ziplock bag containing a test kit, one sheet of A4 with a guide to doing the test, and a second which was a consent form.

The test kit was just like the ones they've been showing on the news, an elongated q-tip like swab and a sample bottle. Some of the details suggested at  least the text of the instructions were pulled out of one of the kits they've been sending out by post. The instructions were basically to stand in front of the mirror, mouth open, look for the arch with your tonsils and swab all around there. In practice I was gagging so hard that I just have to hope I got the right places, I can't say more than that I was in roughly the right area. Once that was done you then had to swab around both nostrils (same swab as your mouth) and then put it in the sample bottle and snap it off. The instructions said at the narrow spot, but my swab didn't seem to have one. OTOH it broke easily enough.

Having filled out the consent form (for the full once a week for a month, then once a month for a year, and blood test if they decide they want them) I then took it and the sample out to the door, where she was still waiting. I handed it over, she put the consent form on the ground, took a picture with her ipad and handed it back. So the nearest contact between us was fingers on the corner of the sheets and kit, and she was gloved for all of it.

Then she went back to her car and rang me from there to go through stuff like DoB and GP's name, plus whether I've had symptoms. All done in under 20 minutes. My GP should get the results in about a week.

The hardest part of it was she had quite a high-pitched voice, spoke quickly, and was very slightly accented, which meant I kept having to ask her to repeat herself over the phone.

And that was my second ONS survey in under 90 minutes as the Labourforce Survey rang for their quarterly checkup just after midday. I told the woman doing that one we might be interrupted so she absolutely blazed through it. The only negative was that every time we mentioned my disability, which comes up three or four times during the survey, she was one of those people who say "Oh, bless you". Interestingly she did want to clarify whether I have a specific learning disability or specific learning difficulty (dyspraxia, so the second). The basic survey question doesn't distinguish between the two, so this must be something new (though they still didn't want to know which SpLD).